Zcash is a cryptocurrency utilizing zero-knowledge proof cryptography to protect the privacy of transactions. Zcash publishes all the payments on a public blockchain but the identity of the sender and the recipient, as well as the amount of transaction, remain private.

History

Zcash was founded by Zooko Wilcox and grew out of the Zerocoin project. The founding scientists of Zcash are Alessandro Chiesa, Christina Garman, Eli Ben-Sasson, Eran Tromer, Ian Miers, Madars Vizra, and Methew Green. The crypto was first announced around the first quarter of 2016, and was officially launched on October, 2016.

Design

The technology behind Zcash protocol is called ZK-SNARK— an acronym for Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-interactive ARgument of Knowledge. ZK-SNARK is a new form of “zero-knowledge cryptography” that makes all the transactions in Zcash, fully encrypted on the blockchain and to ensure that the confidentiality of transaction metadata is fully preserved.